


The Sweater Curse

by HopeCoppice



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gift Giving, Knitting, M/M, Sweater Curse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23400058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeCoppice/pseuds/HopeCoppice
Summary: Aziraphale knits Crowley a jumper. But then he learns of the infamous and terrible Sweater Curse.Inspired by a Tumblr post.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 78
Kudos: 264





	The Sweater Curse

**Author's Note:**

> I should have been working but I got distracted by a Tumblr post. I'll be paying for this tomorrow, but I couldn't resist...
> 
> Inspired by [this post](https://sameoldsorceress.tumblr.com/post/614040160224591872/knittingcelebs-ziegenprinz).

Aziraphale didn’t get a lot of time to knit.

He’d picked it up years ago, of course, more or less as soon as it was invented. There had been a long period of time where most of his downtime seemed to consist of looping wool around his needles and gently setting it into place. But over time, the need for knitted items had subsided, and he’d only really taken up his needles to knit socks for the troops, for example, during the World Wars. Since then, he’d had a great many other things to occupy his time, and knitting had fallen by the wayside.

He’d been working, since the late sixties, on a single jumper. It was black, for the most part, and he intended to add some very dark grey and red in after the fact to create a tartan effect. Most importantly, it was very, very soft. Its intended recipient deserved some softness in his life, after all, and this jumper was going to be extremely soft and comfortable. It was also, in all likelihood, going to be a little large on its wearer’s slender frame, but that was by design; it would be cosy, and it would fit even if Crowley decided to tweak his proportions at some point, as he sometimes did.

Because it was for Crowley; of course it was for Crowley. Thinking about him wearing it might be foolish, however; Aziraphale couldn’t actually picture the demon in an oversized pullover. In any kind of sweater, really, though he supposed Crowley must have worn one, back in the day. It was ridiculous; Crowley would never wear the jumper, not least because Aziraphale would never _finish_ it, at this rate. That was the polite fiction he told himself. The truth was that the jumper was all but finished, had been for decades, and Aziraphale had never quite gathered the courage to give it to him. Now, it had been fifty years, and people weren’t even wearing home-knitted jumpers any more, at least not as much as they had in the past, and Crowley was so unfailingly _trendy_ that Aziraphale doubted he’d so much as _touch_ the thing.

And there was something else. A whisper among knitting circles, passed from craftsperson to craftsperson - _The Sweater Curse._ Aziraphale had heard it mentioned on several occasions, always to knowing nods from the assembled knitters, before he’d finally gathered the courage to ask for clarification.

“The Sweater Curse,” Mabel had told him, “is how if you knit a jumper for your significant other, the relationship ends almost as soon as you give it to them.”

“Or before,” someone else chimed in, as Aziraphale turned very pale.

“Surely- surely that’s just superstition,” he tried to joke, but nobody seemed inclined to agree with him.

“The thing is,” Mabel told him seriously, “if you put all that time and thought into a gift for someone, and they don’t appreciate it - and if they don’t knit themselves, they’re probably never going to _really_ appreciate how much work you put into it - it does make you reassess your relationship rather frankly.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale had responded, rather faintly, because it had suddenly occurred to him that Crowley not wearing the jumper he’d knitted for him so lovingly would be _awful._ Crowley not appreciating it, not _liking_ it… Aziraphale would feel like such a failure. And of course his work would go unappreciated, it always had. Gabriel had never appreciated anything Aziraphale had done, and neither had the rest of Heaven… It was foolish, really, perhaps even _cruel,_ to expect Crowley to react to the jumper the way he wished he would. To expect him to treasure it, to hope that he would run his fingers over the rows of stitches and marvel at the softness, at the different textures Aziraphale had taken pains to work into it. Admittedly, Crowley wasn’t what a human might term Aziraphale’s ‘significant other’, but he was the only other that felt significant to Aziraphale, and he didn’t want to risk their falling out.

So the jumper stayed hidden in a wardrobe, in Aziraphale’s shop, as the nineties passed into the noughties. He actually finished it, finally, in a moment of weakness during their first year at the Dowlings’. Nanny Ashtoreth had been shivering, earlier that day, despite the several layers she wore, and Aziraphale had thought, maybe, that he could give her the jumper and- and- and she would be warm. But then he remembered the sweater curse, and it wasn’t as if Crowley liked tartan anyway, and when he saw her next she seemed quite warm enough. He banished the jumper to a chest in the Dowlings’ attic - close to hand, in case of need, but not anywhere it was likely to be unearthed - and did his best to forget about it.

Then, of course, the world ended. Or nearly ended. Adam put everything back the way it was supposed to be, the bookshop was restored, and he and Crowley were finally free. That felt like an ending in itself, but it was also a beginning. And, as it turned out, it was a new beginning for him and Crowley, too.

“Angel,” Crowley blurted out, on the way home from the Ritz, “you will tell me, won’t you? If I’m ever going the wrong speed, again.”

“You nearly flattened a pedestrian a few days ago,” Aziraphale pointed out, puzzled, “and I’m fairly certain I mentioned your speed then.”

“I mean… I meant… you said I go too fast for you.” And that, oh, _that_ rang so many bells. That set a cacophony of campanologists a-clamour in his head.

“Oh, Crowley. I meant- I was- that is, there’s no _wrong speed_. Not now.”

“There… isn’t?” Crowley’s eyes were so wide, Aziraphale fancied he could see them around the edges of the demon’s sunglasses. “There isn’t?”

“No. You can’t go too slow, for example. There’s no rush.” He took a deep breath. “And without Heaven and Hell breathing down our necks… there’s no _too fast_ , either.”

For a moment, Crowley was so still that Aziraphale wondered if he’d stopped time again, just for himself. Then shaking hands touched Aziraphale’s cheeks, and Crowley was so close that Aziraphale could feel his breath shaking too.

“Angel- can I-?”

“Please,” Aziraphale whispered, and gently plucked Crowley’s sunglasses from his face. “Oh, there you are. Yes, _please.”_

Crowley’s lips had touched his, hesitant at first, then hungry, and Aziraphale found himself responding in kind, found himself thinking, as he did, _oh, this is significant._ But Crowley hadn’t hesitated to ask him if he could call him his partner - _we’re too old to be boyfriends, I think_ \- and Aziraphale had been utterly delighted.

Six months later, they were sitting in Crowley’s flat together and Aziraphale was grumbling affably about the minimalist furniture and how the hipster bar stools in Crowley’s kitchen weren’t designed for ample angelic bottoms, when Crowley interrupted his train of thought by shivering.

“You’re cold,” Aziraphale observed, and Crowley shook his head.

“Don’t worry about it. Go on, my interior design is terrible, says the man with a tartan bedspread.”

“No, you’re- you’re shivering. I didn’t think you got cold.”

“I don’t, usually.” He sighed. “I’m coming up to my shed, that’s all - it’s not a real shed, not any more, I haven’t been a snake in too long. But part of me seems to remember, and it gets cold and irritable. Maybe in some pocket of the universe, my snake form is shedding.”

“Oh. Well, I hate to see you suffer.”

“Sorry to inflict it on you, then,” Crowley snapped, “but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Can’t you put something warmer on?”

“These are my warmest clothes.” They weren’t much, just a long-sleeved top and a waistcoat and a blazer. “I’ll be fine, angel.”

“No. No, that won’t do- ah.” He remembered two things in swift succession; the jumper in the Dowlings’ loft, and the terrible curse that would come with giving it. But Crowley was cold, he was shivering and miserable, and Aziraphale had given things away with little regard for the consequences before. He would rather risk the curse than let Crowley suffer. “Take the blazer off.”

“What? No, that’ll just make me colder-!”

“You can put it back on in a second, come on.” Aziraphale held his hand out imperiously, and Crowley handed over the blazer without, it seemed, giving it a conscious thought. Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and there it was, lying innocuously on the counter beside them. “There. Put that on.”

Crowley regarded the garment as if it might be a bomb about to go off.

“What is it?”

“It’s a jumper, Crowley. People wear them when they’re cold. You had one, after a fashion, back in the sixties.”

“It’s tartan,” Crowley told him, and picked it up with all the care one might afford a priceless Ming Vase or an ancient parchment. “It’s my size.”

“Well, yes.”

“It’s handmade.”

“Really, Crowley, if we’re going to just sit here staring at it and reciting facts… The wool’s from the late nineteen-fifties, the pattern is from the January, 1961 edition of _Woollen Weekly_ , and it’s never been worn. Any other observations you’d like to make?”

“Did… did _you_ make this?” Crowley was staring at it as if it might bite him. “By hand? For… for me?”

“Well, of course it’s for-” He realised, too late, that Crowley had understood. Aziraphale had tried to make him a gift, and it wasn’t at all Crowley’s style, and he’d poured heart and soul into showing how little he knew about Crowley. “Yes. It’s for you. If you don’t want it-”

“Don’t you dare.” Crowley was clutching the jumper protectively to his chest, now, still handling it so infinitely gently. “It’s mine. I want it.” He took a closer look. “It’s _tartan.”_

“I can miracle that away, if you-” Crowley glared at him again. “I’m… sorry?”

“ _You_ wear tartan. It’s like… like wearing a big sign that says _I’m Aziraphale’s_.” He stroked it once more, then pulled it over his head. It was, as Aziraphale had expected, a little on the large side, but _oh_ how it suited him. “Thank you.”

“You… you like it?”

 _“Angel._ Oh, this must have taken you ages. You haven’t been working on this since the sixties?”

“On and off,” Aziraphale admitted, “mostly off. I thought you’d hate it.”

“Hate it?” Crowley ran his hands down his own chest, clearly marvelling at the softness of the jumper. Aziraphale had to fight the urge to follow the same path with his own hands. “I love it, angel, you- you really made this for me?”

“I really did.”

“It’s perfect,” Crowley told him solemnly, then, “in Tadfield, you said you could feel love?”

“Yes…?” It seemed a strange change of topic; had Crowley realised there was some new threat to deal with from the thwarted apocalypse?

“I think I understand that, now. I can feel the love in this.”

Crowley smiled gently, as if he hadn’t just said the sweetest thing Aziraphale could imagine hearing, and it was almost too much. He could feel tears pricking at the corners of his eyes as he realised his gift was really, truly appreciated. All the hours he’d spent worrying over the jumper, making it tartan just to get a rise out of Crowley, making the tartan subtle enough that Crowley would consider being seen dead wearing it… Crowley really appreciated it. Aziraphale threw himself at him, wrapping him in a tight hug, and Crowley tensed just a fraction before hugging him back.

“I’m going to be touch-sensitive for a bit, angel.” But Crowley didn’t let go. “Thank you for the jumper. It’s the nicest thing I’ve ever had.”

“Oh, really,” Aziraphale muttered, embarrassed, and Crowley kissed his cheek.

“Apart from you, obviously.”

“Oh, stop it, you sappy serpent.” But he couldn’t help smiling back at him. “It suits you.”

“Mm, it does. _You_ suit me.”

Aziraphale turned bright red at that, and Crowley tugged him in for another kiss. Aziraphale wondered, briefly, if there were any recorded cases of relationships imploding due to _excessively cheesy_ appreciation of a hand-knitted sweater. But as Crowley drew away with an apology and a murmured promise of dinner, Aziraphale found himself watching the demon move around the kitchen in a jumper he, Aziraphale, had made, and experiencing a surge of love that threatened to split the seams of his chest.

He thought, on the whole, they might survive this particular curse.


End file.
